Last
Thursday's bombings were not unexpected. Senior police officers had often
warned that an attack in Britain was inevitable, a prediction they
repeated as recently as last month. What the police officers and others
did was to connect the dots, examining where coordinated explosions had
occurred since the build-up to the Iraq war.

Three bombs exploded
in Bali, Indonesia, on 12 October 2002, causing 202 deaths. Most of the
victims were tourists from Australia, which was one of the four countries
that invaded Iraq in March 2003.

On 11 March 2004, 10
bombs went off in trains in Madrid, killing 191 people. Spain's then Prime
Minister Jo Maria Aznar had backed President George W. Bush in his plans
to invade Iraq, and was with Bush and Tony Blair when the final decision
was taken.

If the line
connecting these two dots was to be extended, the police and intelligence
chiefs appeared to conclude that its path would take in the dot that is
Britain. The UK contributed proportionately more to the invasion of Iraq
than did the US (a third of the total military force compared to a tenth
of the Pentagon's).

In the post-war
Iraq, Britain continues to deploy the second-largest force there after the
US, with whom it shares the status of being an occupying power.

Equally vital was
Britain's contribution in the diplomatic arena. When it came to convincing
the world at large of Saddam Hussein's allegedly malevolent plans, Blair
produced a dossier to establish that Iraq was producing weapons of mass
destruction. He and Bush thought a British document would carry more
weight in the Middle East.

The failure of the
Anglo-American occupiers to find WMDs in Iraq, or find a link between
Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida, has been well documented. What is less well
understood is how all this looks to the jihadist -- both Arab and non-Arab
-- of a caste of mind to believe that that Bush and Blair are using the
cover of fighting terrorism to attack Muslim countries. North Korea
reportedly possesses atomic bombs. It is on the US State Department's list
of countries that support international terrorism, as well as having an
appalling human rights record. So why have Bush and Blair not attacked
North Korea yet?

Simple: it is not a
Muslim country, say the Islamists. It is a broad-brush argument, but is no
less potent for that.

The Anglo-American
alliance compounded its problems by showing scant understanding of the
history of Iraq. Today, jihadists are drawn to Iraq not only because it is
occupied, but also because Iraq represents an ancient and powerful idea of
Arab culture and history. After all, Baghdad was, almost uninterruptedly,
the capital of the Islamic empire from 750 to 1258.

Baghdad also holds
the tomb of Abu Hanifa al-Numan (699-767), the founder of the Hanafi Code
of Islamic law, the largest sub-sect among Sunnis. And the tomb of Ali in
Najaf is sacred to both Shias and Sunnis. To Shias, he is Imam Ali; to
Sunnis he is Caliph Ali. Instead of focusing on finishing the onerous task
of decimating al-Qa'ida and its associates in the Afghanistan-Pakistan
border areas -- in which Bush and Blair had the support of the
international community -- they embarked on the illegal venture of
invading Iraq, which has helped create an even more menacing swamp for
breeding extremists. Among those who reached this conclusion is Richard
Clarke, who served as the counter-terrorism chief for 10 years under both
presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush. "I doubt that anyone had the
chance to make the case to Bush that attacking Iraq would make America
less secure and strengthen the broader radical Islamist movement," he
wrote. "Certainly he did not hear that from the small circle of advisers
who alone are the people whose views he respects and trusts." If no one
warned Bush, the same cannot be said of Blair. He was explicitly told by
the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee that attacking Iraq would
make Britain more likely to be attacked. He may claim, as he did
yesterday, that there's no connection because Russia (which opposed the
invasion of Iraq) has been the victim of terrorism, forgetting that the
Chechnya problem, being domestic, does not involve the posting of foreign
troops in that territory. He also pointed to the Bali bomb, as if he
wasn't aware that the big target were visitors from a pro-war nation.

Like it or not, Mr.
Blair, what people will remember is that you listened to the advice you
liked and ignored the rest. That is why London was bombed on Thursday. It
isn't very complicated.

Dilip Hiro
is based in London, writes regularly for the New York Times, The
Observer, The Guardian, The Washington Post and the
Nation magazine, and is a frequent commentator on CNN, BBC, and Sky
TV. His most recent books are
Secrets and Lies: Operation “Iraqi Freedom” and After(Nation Books, 2004) and The Iranian Labyrinth (Nation Books,
forthcoming). Thanks to
Carl Bromley at Nation Books.